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CRITICS of the Puritans,
taking their text from Mrs. Heman's poem, are disposed to judge
harshly, on the
ground of inconsistency, that band of earnest Christians, Who, coming
here
because they had been persecuted in England persecuted in
their turn those who
ventured upon a spiritual angle in any degree different from
their own. Such
critics are, however, confusing the ideals cherished by our forefathers
with
their own ideals for them. They
never
claimed that their object in coming here was to secure for all men the
boon of
freedom in religion. On the contrary, they said quite plainly that the
object
of their emigration was to escape oppression for themselves.
Upon
that they laid the emphasis; and with that they
stopped.
Far from being inconsistent
they adhered through fire and water to their own
self-defensive principle. All
their legislation, all the 108 arrangements of their society were
framed to
secure this object. It was in accordance with this that they reserved
to
themselves the right of admitting only whom they pleased as
freemen of the
colony; and it was to this end that, a little more than a year after
their
arrival, they "ordered and agreed that, for time to come, no man should
be
admitted to the freedom of the Nit such is are members of some
of the churches
within the limits of the same." To them such an ordinance seemed the
one
and only way of forming the Christian republic towards which their
hearts
yearned, a community in which the laws of Moses should constitute the
rules of
civil life and in which the godly clergy should be the interpreters of
those
rules.
Of course, the weakness of
the system lay in the fact that the clergy were only men. And being
men, of
like passions with ourselves, they grew, by the very deference they fed
upon,
into creatures insatiate for power. But pitifully narrow
though they were,
revoltingly cruel though they soon came to be, it should nevertheless
be borne
in mind that they were, in almost every case, sincere. They believed
that they
were conserving the great good of Christian amity in persecuting
relentlessly
all who differed from them, — and so, girding up their loins,
they gave still
another turn to the screw!
And now, having said in
their defence all, as I honestly believe, there is to he said, I can
with a
clear conscience, record their persecutions and paint as
darkly as I must the
horrors of that terrible era. To understand it all we must bear in mind
the
fact that, not only was the number of clergy among the emigrants to
Boston and
vicinity large, but being men of unusual gifts, that they of
necessity
exercised an enormous influence in this "Christian republic."
Moreover, the magistrates themselves were, in a. large number of cases
men
imbued with what we may call the ecclesiastical feeling. When
Governor Dudley,
for instance, came to die, there were found in his pocket these lines
which
showed his own cast of mind to have been fiercely bigoted:
"Let men of God in
Courts and Churches watch O're such as do a Toleration hatch, Lest that Ill Egg bring forth a Cockatrice, To poison all with heresie and vice." |
The "cockatrice"
which most powerfully agitated Boston was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,
delicately
characterized by the Reverend Thomas Welde as "the American Jezebel."
To students of history calmly examining today the testimony on
both sides, Mrs.
Hutchinson stands out however as a gentlewoman of spotless
life, kind heart,
brilliant mind and superb courage. That she had a good deal of that
intellectual vanity possessed by most clever women is also plain. And
she had
besides — and it was this which more than anything
else occasioned her
banishment — a tongue which could and did lash furiously
those whom she
disliked. Comparing with her own clergyman — the Reverend
John Cotton — the
host of other clergy then in the Massachusetts colony, she
found between them
a great gulf fixed; and she said this quite distinctly to the
groups of people
who used to come to her house opposite the place where the Old South
Church now
stands, to hear her discuss Mr. Cotton's sermons.
Mrs. Hutchinson came to the
colony (in the autumn of 1634) primed for religious
discussion. Her father had
been Francis Marbury, a minister, first in Lincolnshire and afterwards
in
London, and in the scholarly and theological atmosphere of his house
she had,
for years, been accepted as the intellectual equal of his ministerial
friends.
Theology, indeed, was as the breath of life to her and she hinted in no
uncertain way to some Puritan ministers who were on the vessel during
her
journey to New England that they might expect to hear more from her in
the new
world. For she regarded herself as one with a mission.
William Hutchinson, the
husband of this lady, was the type of man who is always
married by
strong-minded magnetic women. Winthrop has nothing but words
of contempt for
him, but there is little doubt that a sincere attachment existed
between the
married pair and that Hutchinson possessed sterling character
and solid worth
as well as a comfortable estate. In their Lincolnshire home the two had
been
parishioners of the Reverend John Cotton and regular
attendants at St.
Botolph's Church. When Cotton fled to escape the tyranny of
the bishops, the
Hutchinsons decided to follow, and when the Reverend John
Wheelwright, who had
married — Mrs. Hutchinson's daughter, began to be persecuted
in his turn their
departure was — naturally hastened.
Promptly upon their arrival
in Boston both Hutchinsons made their application to be
received as members of
the church. This step was indispensable to admit the pair into
Christian
fellowship and to allow Mr. Hutchinson the privilege of engaging in
business
and otherwise exercising the rights of a citizen. He came through the
ordeal
easily enough but, in consequence of the reports already spread
concerning her
extravagant opinions, his wife was subjected to a most searching
examination.
Finally, however, she, too, was pronounced a "member in good
standing" of the congregation over which her beloved John Cotton served
as
associate pastor. And now she was ready to enter upon the career which
soon
divided Boston into two violently opposed factions and which ended by
the
withdrawal to England of the brilliant young Governor Vane and by the
banishment from the colony of her with whom he had sympathized.
Even so far back as 1635
Boston seems to have been capable. of great enthusiasm over a woman who
could
persuasively present "some new thing." The doctrine advanced by this
woman was certainly an arresting one for that day. For, cleverly
interwoven
with what was ostensibly only a recapitulation of the sermon preached
the
Sunday before, ran constantly the astonishing proclamation that there
are in
this world certain "elect" who may or may not be ordained clergy and
that to them are given direct revelations of the will of God. Now the
ministers
of New England were formalists to the core and the society which they
dominated
was organized upon the basis that if a man had a sad countenance, wore
sombre
garb, lived an austere life, quoted the Bible freely, attended worship
regularly and took off his hat to the clergy he was a good man. Such a
man
alone might be a citizen. To admit, therefore, that, in place of these
convenient signs of grace, — "works" as they were called,
— one must
rest salvation upon the intimate and so necessarily elusive relation
between
man and his God was to preach political as well as spiritual
revolution. The
logical result of accepting Mrs. Hutchinson's doctrines would have
meant nothing
less than the annihilation of those convenient earmarks by
which the
"good" and the "bad" in the community could be readily
distinguished,
— the "good" marked for civic advancement and the "bad" for
the stocks and banishment.
At first the far-reaching
import of the lady's views seems not to have struck her hearers. All
the
leading and influential people of the town flocked to her "parlour
talks" and, for a time, she was that very remarkable thing —
a prophet
honoured in her own community. For the matter of her "lectures" was
always pithy and bright, the, leader's wit always ready and "everybody
was
there," — which counted then for righteousness just as it
does now.
Hawthorne's genius has conjured up for us the scene at one of these
Hutchinson
gatherings so that we, too, may attend and be among the "crowd
of hooded
women and men in steeple hats and close-cropped hair...
assembled at the door
and open windows of a house newly built. An earnest expression
glows in every
face... and some pressed inward as if the bread of life were to be
dealt forth,
and they feared to lose their share."
Unfortunately Mrs.
Hutchinson
found the transition between the abstract and the concrete as
easy as every
other descensus
Averni. From
preaching against a doctrine of "works" she soon dropped into sly
digs at the pastors who defended this belief. "A company of legall
professors," quoth she, "he poring on the law which Christ hath
abolished."
No wonder it began to be noised abroad that the seer was casting
"reproach
upon the ministers,... saying that none of them did preach the covenant
of free
grace but Master Cotton, and that they have not the seale of the Spirit
and so
were not able ministers of the New Testament."
It was, however, in Cotton's
house and not in her own that Mrs. Hutchinson made the fatal admission
for
which she had afterward to pay so dear. The elders had come to Boston
in a body
to see how far Cotton "stood for" the things his gifted parishioner
was preaching and, in the hope of clearing the whole matter up, the
clergyman
had suggested a friendly conference with Mrs. Hutchinson at his house.
The interview
tool: place, the lady cleverly parrying all attempts to make her say
indiscreet
things. But finally, the Reverend Hugh Peters having besought her to
deal
frankly and openly with them, she admitted that she saw a wide
difference
between Mr. Cotton's ministry and theirs and that it was because they
had not
the seal of the Spirit that this difference arose. If Mrs. Hutchinson
had not
thought herself in confidential intercourse with those who were men of
honour
as well as clergymen, she would never have put the thing thus bluntly.
But the
event proved that her confession was treasured up to be used against
her, — and
that there were many in the colony who chafed as she did, under the
power of
those preaching this "covenant of works." For promptly the liberals,
whose mouthpiece she had unconsciously become, blossomed out a sturdy
political
party led by the enthusiastic Vane. The part which he played
in the
controversy has already been touched upon in the previous chapter and
the brave
way in which he fought against the decree which would banish the
incoming
friends of Wheelwright there described.
But it all availed nothing.
The theocracy had been attacked and the clergy sprang like one man to
its
defence. Even Cotton, after a little, ranged himself on the side of his
order
as against the woman who lauded him above his brethren. The "trial,"
in the course of which Mrs. Hutchinson was condemned, is one of the
ghastliest
things in the history of the colony. The prisoner, who was about to
become a
mother, was made to stand until she was exhausted, the while those in
whom she
had confided as friends plied her with endless questions about
her theological
beliefs. Through two long weary days of hunger and cold she defended
herself as
well as she could before these "men of God," but her able words
availed nothing; she had "disparaged the ministers" and they were
resolved to be revenged. Though Coddington pointed out that "no law of
God
or man" had been broken by the woman before them, she was none the less
banished "as unfit for our society." So there was driven out of the
city she had adopted the most remarkable intellect Boston has ever made
historic by misunderstanding.
Roger Williams was another
great and good man of whom the city founded by Winthrop soon proved
itself unworthy.
Just here seems as good a place as any to attempt some
explanation of the
change that had come about in Winthrop's character. His letters to his
wife
show him to have been tender and gentle, but he was certainly
relentless in his
attitude towards Mrs. Hutchinson, — though all the time more
than half
persuaded that what she said was true. The fact is that Winthrop's very
amiability made him subject to men of inflexible will. His
dream had been to
create on earth a commonwealth of saints whose joy should be to walk in
the
ways of God. But in practice he had to deal with the strongest of human
passions and become himself intolerant for the sake of leading an
intolerant
party. The exigencies of life in America seem to have made him more and
more
narrow as the years went by, but he appears to have repented, at the
last, of
his tendency towards intolerance; for, being requested on his death-bed
to sign
an order for the banishment of some person for heterodoxy, he waved the
paper
away, saying, "I have done too much of that work
already."
Williams, though, was one
whom he persecuted with a will. He had been glad to have him
come to Boston
and he recorded his arrival — in the Journal of
February, 1631 — as that of
"a godly minister." But he did not then know what startling doctrines
the new arrival was to set forth or how iconoclastic to the state would
prove
this clergyman's earnest conviction that, in all matters of religious
belief
and worship, man was responsible to God alone. Scarcely had Williams
set foot
in Boston when things began to happen. In the first place, he
was thoroughly
convinced that the Puritans had done wrong in holding communion with
Church of
England folk, whose power and resources were constantly employed in
crushing
the spirit of true piety. So he refused to join with the
church at Boston
until its congregation had declared repentance for having had communion
with
the churches in England.
His chief offence against
the state, however, was in immediately promulgating the principle for
which he
all his life contended, i.e. that the magistrates had no right whatever
to
impose civil penalties upon those who had broken only church rules.
From the
point of view of Bostonians of that day any man holding this
opinion was by
that very fact unfitted for the office of a minister among them.
Consequently,
the magistrates opposed with all the authority at their command the
settling of
Williams in the Salem pulpit to which he had now been called. His
history from
this time on does not properly belong to a book about Boston;
but it is worth
noting that he was persecuted for being, among other things, a believer
in
adult baptism and that against the Anabaptists, as they were
called, were
directed some of the most cruel persecutions ever waged in the Saint
Botolph's
Town of New England.
One can scarcely believe the
records as one follows the story of the way President Dunster
of Harvard
College was treated for the crime of believing in adult baptism.
Because he
would not baptize infants he was deprived of his office (in October,
1654), and
when he asked leave to stay for a few months in the house he had built,
on the
ground that
"1st. The time of the
year is unseasonable, being now very near the shortest day and the
depth of
winter.
"2nd. The place into
which I go is unknown…
to me and my family, and the
ways and means of subsistence....
"3rd. The place from
which I go hath fuel and all provisions for man and beast laid in for
the
winter.... The house I have builded upon very damageful conditions to
myself,
out of love for the college, taking country pay in lieu of bills of
exchange on
England, or the house would not have been built....
"4th. The persons, all
beside myself, are women and children, on whom little help, now their
minds lie
under the actual stroke of affliction and grief. My wife is sick and my
youngest child extremely so and hath been for months, so that we dare
not carry
him out of doors, yet much worse now than before...."
The
Wells-Adams House, on Salem Street, where the Baptists held secret
meetings.
Still slight heed was paid
to him. For in answer to these pathetic demands Dunster was reprieved
only
until March and then, with what was due him still unpaid, he was driven
forth,
a broken man, to die in poverty and neglect. Clearly Massachusetts was
not a
comfortable place for the Baptists. You see the eminent John Cotton had
declared that the rejection of infant baptism would overthrow the
church; that
this was a capital crime and that therefore, those opposing
this tenet were
"foul murtherers!" The offence was plainly enough admitted to be
against the clergy rather than against God. When John Wilson
— of whom in his
venerable old age Hawthorne has given us a pleasing portrait in "The
Scarlet Letter" — was in his last sickness he was
asked to declare what
he thought to be the. worst sins of the country. His reply was that
people
sinned very deeply in his estimation when they rebelled against the
power of
the clergy.
Upon the Quakers, who
absolutely refused to conform, and who promulgated the doctrine that
the Deity
communicated directly with men, were naturally visited the worst of all
the religious
persecutions. The first Quakers who came to Boston were women, Mary
Fisher and
Ann Austin, the former being a person whose previous experience enabled
her to
compare unfavourably the manners of New England Christians with those
of
Turkish Mahometans! For, some time before setting out for Boston, Mary
Fisher
had made a romantic pilgrimage to Constantinople for the purpose of
warning the
Turks to "flee from the wrath to come." This was at a time when the
Grand Vizier was encamped with his army near Adrianople, to whom this
astonishing person having journeyed "600 miles, without any
abuse or injury"
had herself announced as "an Englishwoman bearing a message
from the
Great God to the Great Turk." She was promptly given an audience and
treated with great respect, an escort being even offered to
her when the time
carne for her to depart.
As for her treatment in
Boston, let us read Sewel: "It was in the month called July, of this
present year (l656) when Mary Fisher and Ann Austin arrived in the road
before
Boston, before ever a law was made there against the Quakers; and yet
they were
very ill-treated; for before they came ashore the deputy governor,
Richard
Bellingham (the governor himself being out of town), sent
officers aboard, who
searched their trunks and chests and took away the books they found
there,
which were about one hundred and carried them ashore, after
having commanded
the women to be kept prisoners aboard; and the said books were, by an
order of
the council, burnt in the market-place by the hangman.... And then they
were
shut up close prisoners and the command given that none should come to
them
without leave; a fine of five pounds being laid upon any that should
otherwise
come at or speak with them, tho' but at the window. Their pens, ink and
paper
were taken from them. and they not suffered to have any candlelight in
the
night season; nay, what is more, they were stript naked under pretence
to know
whether they were witches, tho' in searching, no token was found upon
them but
of innocence. And in this search they were so
barbarously misused that
modesty forbids to mention it. And that none might have
communication with
them a board was nailed up before the window of the jail.
"And seeing they were
not provided with victuals, Nicholas Upshal, one who had lived long in
Boston
and was a member of the church there, was so concerned about it
(liberty being
denied to send them provision) that he purchas'd it of the
jailor at the rate
of five shillings a week lest they should have starved. And
after having been
about five weeks prisoners, William Chichester, master of a
vessel, was bound
in one hundred pound bond to carry them back, and not suffer any to
speak with
them, after they were out on board; and the jailor kept their beds and
their
Bible, for his fees."
The lack of laws touching
the Quakers was now at once supplied. Those who brought in members of
this sect
were fined and those who entertained then) deprived of one or both
ears. In
1656 an act was passed by which it cost five shillings to attend a
Quaker
meeting and five pounds to speak at one. In October of the same year
the
penalty of death was decreed against all Quakers who should return to
the
colony after they had been banished. When Nicholas Upshall, the kindly
innkeeper1
who had befriended Mary Fisher and her comrade, protested
against such legislation he was fined and finally banished. Then, to
provide a
fillip to zeal, constables who failed vigorously to break up Quaker
meetings
were themselves fined and imprisoned, a share of the fine
inposed being given
to the informer. The object of this last-named legislation was to
sustain the
atrocious custom of "flogging through three towns," a privilege
established by the Vagabond Act, so called, of May, 1661, in which it
was
provided that any foreign Quaker or any native, upon a second
conviction, might
be ordered to receive an unlimited number of stripes, the whip for such
service
being a two-handled implement, armed with lashes made of
twisted and knotted
cord or catgut. The last Quaker known to have been whipped in Boston
was
Margaret Brewster, whose offence Samuel Sewall has chronicled in the
following
paragraph: "July 8, 1677, New Meeting House Mane: In sermon time there
came in a female Quaker, in a canvas frock, her hair disshevelled and
loose
like a Periwigg, her face as black as ink, led by two other Quakers and
two
others following. It occasioned the greatest and most amazing
uproar that I
ever saw. Isaiah i. 12, 14." Whittier has put the scene into verse for
us
and made us poignantly to feel its horror:
"Save the mournful
sackcloth about her wound, Unclothed as the primal mother, With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed With a fire she dared not smother.... "And the minister paused in his sermon's midst And the people held their breath, For these were the words the maiden said Through lips as pale as death:... "Repent! repent! ere the Lord shall speak In thunder and breaking seals! Let all souls worship him in the way His light within reveals. "She shook the dust from her naked feet And her sackcloth closer drew, And into the porch of the awe-hushed church She passed like a ghost from view." |
The meeting-house which
provided the background for this very dramatic scene was the
predecessor on
the same site of the present Old South Church.2
Thither Margaret
Brewster had travelled a long distance for the express purpose of
protesting
against further persecutions of her sect. At her trial, she
said some brave
words that effectually stirred-after an interval — the
consciences of her
persecutors. John Leverett was then chief magistrate and to him she
appealed
thus: "Governour, I desire thee to hear me a little for I have
something
to say in behalf of my friends in this place:... Oh governour I cannot
but
press thee again and again, to put an end to these cruel laws that you
have
made to fetch my friends from their peaceable meetings, and keep them
three
days in the house of correction, and then whip them for
worshipping the true
and living God: Governour, let me entreat thee to put an end
to these laws,
for the desire of my soul is that you may act for God, and then would
you
prosper, but if you act against the Lord and his blessed truth, you
will
assuredly come to nothing, the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it...."
"Margaret
Brewster," carne the stern reply, "you are to have your
clothes
stript off to the middle, and to be tied to a cart's tail at the South
Meeting
House, and to be drawn through the town, and to receive twenty stripes
upon
your naked body."
But though Margaret Brewster
suffered last she did not suffer most. Mary Dyer paid the extreme
penalty in
1660 because she insisted on coming back to Boston after she had been
reprieved
from death and banished. In no case better than here may we see
illustrated the
lengths to which religious enthusiasm will carry the person possessed
by it.
For with William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson she had been
condemned to
hang on the Common, but "after she was upon the ladder with
her arms and
legs tied and the rope about her neck she was spared at the earnest
solicitation of her son and sent out of the colony." But, because she
thought she must needs die for the triumph of her cause she came back a
year
later to be executed.
Josiah Southwick, eldest son
of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, was another who "appeared manfully
at
Boston in the face of his persecutors" after he had been shipped to
England. As punishment, he was "sentenced to be whipt at a cart's tail,
ten stripes in Boston, the same in Roxbury and the same in
Dedham." The
peculiar atrocity of flogging from town to town lay in the fact that
the
victim's
wounds became cold between
the times of punishment, and in winter often froze, the
resulting torture
being intolerably agonizing.
The case of the Southwicks
is particularly interesting as an extreme example of the
far-reaching ferocity
of persecution as pursued by Endicott. Whittier in his poem,
"Cassandra
Southwick," has given us the colour of this event but, for poetic
purposes,
has made the woman young. In point of fact, however, Lawrence
and Cassandra
Southwick were an aged couple, members of the Salem church.
Besides the son
Josiah, already referred to, they had a younger boy and girl named
Daniel and
Provided. The father and mother were first arrested in 1657 for
harbouring two
Quakers, and although her husband was soon released Cassandra was
imprisoned
for seven weeks and fined forty shillings because there was found on
her person
a Quaker tract. Later, the three elder Southwicks were again arrested
and sent
to Boston to serve as an example. Here, in the February of 1657 they
were
whipped without form of trial, imprisoned eleven days and their cattle
seized
and sold to pay a fine of £4 13 s. for six weeks' absence
from worship on the
Lord's day. The letter which they sent from their prison in Boston to
Endicott
and the others at Salem is worthy of being reproduced in full because
it
breathes the very spirit of that peace for which the Quakers ideally
stood.
"This to the Magistrates
at Court in Salem.
"Friends,
"Whereas it was your
pleasure to commit us, whose names are underwritten, to the house of
correction
in Boston, altho' the Lord, the righteous Judge of heaven and earth, is
our
witness, that we had done nothing worthy of stripes or of bonds; and we
being
committed by your court to be dealt withal as the law provides for
foreign
Quakers, as ye please to term us; and having some of us suffered your
law and
pleasures, now that which we do expect is, that whereas we
have suffered your
law, so now to be set free by the same law, as your manner is with
strangers,
and not to put us in upon the account of one law, and execute another
law upon
us, of which according to your own manner, we were never convicted as
the law
expresses. If you had sent us upon the account of your new law, we
should have
expected the jaylor's order to have been on that account, which that it
was
not, appears by the warrant which we have, and the punishment
which we bare,
as four of us were whipp'd, among whom was one who had
formerly been whipp'd
so now also according to your former law.
"Friends, let it not be
a small thing in your eyes, the exposing as much as in you lies, our
families
to ruine. It's not unknown to you the season and the time of year for
those who
live of husbandry, and what their cattle and families may be exposed
unto; and
also such as live on trade; we know if the spirit of Christ did dwell
and rule
in you these things would take impression on your spirits. What our
lives and conversation
have been in that place is well known; and what we now suffer for is
much of
false reports, and ungrounded jealousies of heresie and sedition. These
things
lie upon us to lay before you. And, for our parts, we have true peace
and rest
in the Lord in all our sufferings, and are made willing in the
power and
strength of God, freely to offer up our lives in this cause of God for
which we
suffer: Yea and we do find (through grace) the enlargements of God in
our
imprisoned state,
to whom, alone We commit ourselves and families, for the disposing
of
us according to his
infinite wisdom and pleasure, in whose love is our rest and life.
"From the House of
Bondage in Boston wherein we are made captives by the wills of men,
although
made free by the Son, John 8, 36. In which we quietly rest, this 16th
of the
5th month, 1658.
"LAWRENCE | |
"CASSANDRA | SOUTHWICK, |
"JOSIAH |
"SAMUEL SHATTOCK, |
"JOSHUA BUFFUM." |
When Lawrence and Cassandra
Southwick were rearrested after banishment for not having gone
away promptly,
the old people piteously pleaded "that they had no otherwhere
to
go." But they were none the less commanded to get out quickly
under pain
of death. They went to Shelter Island, where they died within a few
days of
each other as a result of flogging and starvation. And, inconceivable
as it
seems, the sale as slaves of the younger children, Daniel and
Provided, was
actually authorized by law to satisfy a debt accumulated from
fines for their
non-attendance at church! Thus were free-born English subjects dealt
with for
cherishing a faith subversive of a theocracy.
In all honesty, however, it
should be said that not all the Quakers, by any means, were as mild and
inoffensive as the Southwicks. Even the gentle-spirited Roger Williams
was at
one time so sorely tried in patience by them that he allowed himself to
write:
"They are insufferably proud and contemptuous. I have, therefore,
publicly
declared myself that a due and moderate restraint and punishment of
these
incivilities, though pretending conscience, is so far from persecution,
Properly so called, that it is a duty and command of God unto all
mankind,
first in Families, and thence unto all mankind Societies."
What did they do? Everything
which they thought might tend to hatter down the intolerant
spirit of
Puritanism. A favourite method of protest was for Quaker women to break
bottles
over the head of a preacher "as a sign of his emptiness." John Norton
was more than once thus affronted while engaged in the solemn delivery
of the
Thursday lecture in Boston. This could scarcely have been pleasant, of
course,
either to the preacher or his people. But a little tact, above all a
sense of
humour, would have smoothed the sharpness of the controversy.
Only, these
qualities were precisely the ones which the Puritans and the Quakers
both
conspicuously lacked. Against the Puritan persistency, therefore, there
was
ranged the exceeding contumacy of the Quakers. And if the war had been
left to
fight itself out, the Quakers, because they had a great principle on
their side,
would probably have won the day, revolting and bloody as must have been
the
battles. Happily, however, three or four influences cooperated to put
an end to
this unseemly conflict.
One of the sufferers from
persecution having gone to England and gained access to
Charles II, brought
back from that monarch a peremptory command that the death Penalty
against the
Quakers should be no more inflicted and that those who were
under judgment or
in Prison should be sent to England for trial. Sir Richard Saltonstall,
too, —
who had returned to England some time before, and was watching wit],
great
interest, though
at a distance, the course of
events in and about Boston, — perceived
that the intolerance of Wilson and Cotton would work great harm to the
colony,
and to these two teachers of the Boston First Church he had addressed a
manly
letter of remonstrance. Most important of all for the Quakers, John
Norton, who
of all the clergy had exercised the most baleful influence in the
direction of
intolerance, died in 1663, suddenly and of apoplexy, and the friends of
the Quakers,
after the fashion of the day, pronounced his sudden taking off a
punishment
sent by the Lord.
Sir
Richard Saltonstall
Already John Norton had been
nearly frightened to death in England by the Quakers. The
narrow-minded but
well-meaning priest had been sent with Simon Bradstreet to present an
address
to the just-crowned Charles and find out what his attitude towards the
colonies
was to be. Norton had accepted this mission with reluctance, for he
knew
perfectly well that, in the eye of the English law, the executions he
had
pushed against the Quakers were homicide. But, after long vacillation,
"the Lord so encouraged and strengthened his heart" that he
ventured
to sail. From the king and his prime minister he and his companion soon
found
they had nothing to fear, but they were none the less uncomfortable in
London,
the reason whereof may be gleaned from this anecdote related by Sewel:
"Now the deputies of
New England came to London, and endeavoured to clear
themselves as much as
possible, but especially priest Norton, who bowed no less reverently
before the
archbishop, than before the king.... They would fain have altogether
excused
themselves; and priest Norton thought it sufficient to say
that he did not
assist in the bloody trial nor had advised to it.
"But John Copeland,
whose ear was cut off at Boston, charged the contrary upon him: and G.
Fox the
elder, got occasion to speak with them in the presence of some of his
friends
and asked Simon Bradstreet, one of the New England magistrates,
'whether he had
not a hand in putting to death those they nicknamed Quakers'? He not
being able
to deny this confessed he had. Then G. Fox asked him and his associates
that
were present, 'whether they would acknowledge themselves to be subjects
to the
law of England? and if they did by what law they had put his friends to
death?'
They answered 'They were subject to the laws of England and
they had put his
friends to death by the same law as the Jesuits were put to death in
England.'
Hereupon G. Fox asked, 'whether they did believe that those,
his friends whom
they had put to death, were Jesuits or jesuistically affected?' They
said
'Nay.' 'Then' replied G. Fox, 'ye have murdered them; for since ye put
them to
death by the law that Jesuits are put to death here in England, it
plainly
appears you have put them to death arbitrarily, without any law.' "
Fox might have turned the
tables, it is clear, upon the magistrate and the minister, but he had
no desire
to do that. Though many royalists urged him to prosecute
relentlessly these
New England persecutors of his followers, he said he preferred to leave
them
"to the Lord to whom vengeance belonged." So Bradstreet and John
Norton came back to their homes in safety though they passed a very bad
quarter
of a year in London.
The election in 1673 of
Leverett as governor sounded, however, the death-knell to
persecution. For
though he had been trained under Cotton's preaching, he was personally
opposed
to violent methods of suppressing dissenting sects, and, during his
administration, the Baptists, the Quakers and all the rest
worshipped their
God undisturbed by any legal interference. Long and bitter had
been the
struggle, but now, at last, there was assured to those in Massachusetts
a boon for
which men have ever been content to yield up their life in
dungeons, on the
scaffold and at the stake, that very noble and precious thing we call
"freedom to worship God."
___________________________________
1 See "Among Old New England Inns."
2 See "Romances of Old New England Churches."